DEAL: Buy Flying Blue Miles (Air France/KLM) at a 40% discount (1.83 cts/mile) until Aug 4th

Air France’s La Premiere (Source)

Strategically buying miles and points for luxury travel can be a great deal. We've just seen the Air France-KLM Flying Blue program launch a new promotion on purchased miles. While this offer isn’t quite as good as some of the past deals we’ve seen from the program, it still has the potential to represent good value.

Promotion on Purchased Flying Blue Miles

Through 11:59 PM CET on Sunday, August 4, 2024, the Air France-KLM Flying Blue program is offering a promotion on purchased miles. The accounts we manage all show a discount of up to 40%, which you can unlock as long as you buy at least 24,000 miles in one transaction. It’s possible that different accounts may be targeted for different bonuses, as you do have to log into your Flying Blue account to see what your offer is.

How Much Does It Cost to Buy Flying Blue Miles?

Ordinarily, you can buy Flying Blue miles for as little as 3.05 cents each (in USD), before any discounts or bonuses (the cost per mile is lowest if you buy lots of miles). If you maxed out the promotion and purchased 100,000 Flying Blue miles, you’d receive a total of 100,000 miles at a cost of $1,830, which is a rate of 1.83 cents per mile.

Historically, Flying Blue has typically offered a 100% bonus on purchased points during a promotion, which is an opportunity to buy points for 1.53 cents each. However, it has been some time since we’ve seen such an offer, and the last promotion was for a 70% bonus.

How Many Flying Blue Miles Can You Purchase?

Those without status in the Flying Blue program are limited to purchasing at most 100,000 Flying Blue miles per calendar year before any bonuses. Elite members can purchase an unlimited number of miles, though there may be limits on how many bonus miles can be earned during promotions.

Is Buying Flying Blue Miles Worth It?

The Air France-KLM Flying Blue program has dynamic award pricing but has more consistency in pricing than in the past. Generally speaking, saver level transatlantic business class awards cost 50,000 miles one-way, which is great.

Fly Oman Air’s First Class with Flying Blue miles (Source)

The big selling point of the Flying Blue program is that Air France and KLM make more award seats available to members of the Flying Blue program than to members of partner airline frequent flyer programs. Furthermore, nowadays Flying Blue allows free stopovers on awards, which is an awesome feature.

If you’re looking to book a transatlantic award ticket, especially in business class, it’s hard to beat the value proposition of booking through Flying Blue. Not only is there a good amount of availability, but both Air France and KLM offer solid transatlantic business class products.

What Are Good Uses of Flying Blue Miles?

As mentioned above, our preferred use of Flying Blue miles is for travel in business class on Air France or KLM across the Atlantic. Currently, business class awards across the Atlantic start at 50,000 miles one-way, which is an amazing deal.

When you combine the overall value and availability for transatlantic business class flights, Flying Blue miles are pretty tough to beat, in our opinion.

Does Flying Blue Have Fuel Surcharges on Award Tickets?

Flying Blue does have carrier-imposed surcharges (often referred to as fuel surcharges) on award tickets, though they’re mild compared to what you’d pay for a British Airways business class award. Expect Flying Blue carrier-imposed surcharges to generally be around $200 one-way for a transatlantic business class award (and then taxes and fees are in addition to that, but you’d pay that with any airline).

On What Airlines Can You Redeem Flying Blue Miles?

As you can see above, we think there’s the most value to be had when redeeming directly on Air France & KLM. Beyond that, Flying Blue miles can also be redeemed on a variety of other airlines:

• Air France & KLM are in SkyTeam, so you can redeem miles on all SkyTeam partners; however, we generally find SkyTeam isn’t as good as oneworld or Star Alliance when it comes to reciprocal award space

• Flying Blue has some unique airline partnerships outside of SkyTeam, including with airlines like Aircalin and Etihad

• Flying Blue also allows first-class redemptions on select partners, including China Eastern, Garuda Indonesia, and Oman Air

Fly Garuda Indonesia’s First Class with Flying Blue miles (Source)

How Much Are Flying Blue Miles Worth?

Everyone will value mileage currencies differently, but we value Flying Blue miles at ~1.3 cents each. However, we tend to value points pretty conservatively, and there are many ways to get way more value from Flying Blue miles than that.

Do Flying Blue Miles Expire?

Flying Blue miles expire if you have no qualifying flight or credit card activity in your account for 24 months. You can extend the expiration of miles by crediting any eligible flights to Flying Blue, having Flying Blue elite status, or by having a co-branded Flying Blue credit card.

Note that buying points directly from Flying Blue, or transferring them from a Flying Blue transfer partner, wouldn’t extend the expiration of the miles.

Bottom Line

Air France-KLM Flying Blue is offering a promotion on purchased miles, giving members the opportunity to buy miles with up to a 40% discount. This is an opportunity to acquire miles for 1.83 cents each.

While not as good as the 100% bonus we’ve seen in the past, this is still better than the most recent offer we saw, and there are plenty of situations where this could represent good value. There is a lot of merit to Flying Blue, especially for transatlantic business class redemptions, where award pricing is generally reasonable, and availability is good.